Archive for April, 2009

The article is more or less OK. It says that the sentence is not actually expected to be carried, which is good. (Although similar cases have already ended in executions in the past.) But why does a half of the article discuss the “occupation”? And why does it have a photo of an Israeli soldier with the caption “Israel has settled hundreds of thousands of its citizens on occupied land” instead of a photo of a man who was sentenced to death for selling land to Jews? Many countries have border conflicts – Armenia, Serbia, Russia, China, India, the UK, etc. But what other country has a law that says that anyone who sells land to Jews, must be killed? (Oh, and the PA is not exactly a country.)

That’s exactly why i think that Israel, despite its demographic problems, should not have laws that prohibit selling of land to non-Jews. Such laws are discussed in the Knesset, but implementing them would be badly racist. The right thing to do is not to be like the PA.

For many months the Hebrew word for “messiah” in the English Wikipedia was spelled terribly wrong. The correct vocalized spelling is מָשִׁיחַ, which looks very logical to anyone who has intermediate understanding of Hebrew morphology. But the Wikipedia article Messiah had this atrocious spelling since 2008-12-24: מֹשִׁיַּח and before that, since 2008-02-08, it was even more monstrous: מָׁשִיַח. Before 2008-02-08 it was correctly written מָשִׁיחַ, and when some user changed it, possibly in good faith, nobody noticed.

An Israeli has hard time understanding this mumbo-jumbo, let alone a tourist. This bus stop is placed in the center of the city, a place bustling with foreigners, and at least one of these bus lines is relevant for tourists. Would you know which one, if you wouldn’t know Hebrew?

I helped two nice Italian tourists find their way in Jerusalem today. They knew English, but how could i miss an opportunity to practice my Italian? I barely touched any Italian for two years, so i spoke slowly, but managed to say complete sentences and didn’t mix in any Catalan words. They were pleasantly surprised, of course, and said that my Italian pronunciation was correct.

Now there’s a little less antisemitism in the world. But not just because of my Italian skills, but because the bus they needed to take arrived quickly, which, for Israel, is a miracle. So, Egged: Fight antisemitism, improve the Israeli bus services!